I am fascinated by the differences that separate peoples and cultures. If human beings are the animal for which life is a problem requiring an answer - liberated, as we are, from the autopilot of instinctual programming - then what could be more interesting than answers to life developed by radically different cultures over thousands of years?

Other cultures, after all, provide us with an entry point for investigating the nose-on-our-face problems, the nose-on-our-face mistakes, that bedevil us individually and as a society. In one of his most telling observations, Thoreau wrote:

When we encounter, and quite possibly laugh at, foreign cultures, the precious opportunity also arises of laughing at our own. This is a laughter of liberation - not just from the disco flares and bowler hats of “the old fashions“, but from the worship of the flag, of the “fatherland”, from hatred of the official ‘enemy’. As I will discuss below, it is also an opportunity to laugh at our notions of how best to make ourselves happy.

The Internationally Famous Cabbage Dish

In late 2005, I visited South Korea for the first time. I was delighted
to sit on floor cushions around low restaurant tables to be confronted
by dozens of small dishes of food, most of it unknown, almost all of it
devilishly spicy. Equally delightful were the loud noises made by my
endlessly polite and kind Korean hosts as they slurped their noodles
and guzzled their soup. The part of me that remains forever
ten-years-old felt at last vindicated by the fact that a whole society
deemed civilised and polite the same behaviour that had earned me
fierce looks as a child. Thoreau again:

“The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul
to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good
behaviour. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Ibid,
p.53)

I also enjoyed slurping the mysterious, traditional herbal teas with
curious objects bobbing about in them; the fruits I’d never seen
before; the ornate rice cakes and other mysteries of the ancient Korean
culture. I feel there is something heart-warming about seeing
difference and thinking: ‘That’s how they like it - that’s what they
enjoy,’ even when what they enjoy means nothing to me. I find it
wonderful that Koreans are deeply proud of their spicy pickled Chinese
cabbage, ‘kimchi’, the national dish. A guide book declares with
typically supercharged Korean enthusiasm:

“Visitors cannot really say they have been to Korea if they have not
tasted kimchi, the internationally famous cabbage dish... These days
kimchi is gaining popularity worldwide for its nutritional value and
disease-prevention effect.”

A few years ago I went with my Japanese girlfriend to an English pub
for the first time. As we sat down, she took out two small, folded
towels and placed them next to her glass on the table - one to wipe her
glass, as required, and one to dab her face. The joy of seeing that
little ritual carried out in the middle of a spit-and-sawdust pub is
exactly what I have in mind. Difference reminds us of the uniqueness of
others, of their preciousness, transience, and in fact of their
fundamental aloneness in the world.

A sense of fellow feeling and compassion can also be found in a sense
of unity beneath difference - others may do things differently, but we
can understand what it is they like about it; we can empathise with
their happiness in doing things ‘just so’ in a way that makes them feel
more comfortable in the world.

By contrast, there is something depressing and dehumanising about the
thought of people as anonymous crowds, as blank “masses” of humanity.
I’ve always recoiled from the title of John Carey’s book, The
Intellectuals and the Masses. Regardless of the contents of the book,
the title always reminds me of the sense, which many “intellectuals”
seem to have, that a select few brainy types are real, serious
individuals, while the rest of us are mere “masses”, “proletarians”, a
kind of human porridge.

But what exactly is an “intellectual”? If someone describes themselves
as an “intellectual”, I cringe, much as I do when I hear someone
describe themselves as “a celebrity” or “famous”. I greatly enjoyed
reading this description of an intellectual upper class in H.G. Wells’
novel The First Men In The Moon:

"These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall,
form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of
them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion
the Grand Lunar... The unlimited development of the minds of the
intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony
skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about
the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far and no
farther' to all his possibilities." (H.G. Wells, The First Men in The
Moon)

By some quirk of fate, Wells’ description finds amusing and
contradictory echoes in Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the role of liberal
intellectuals in our own society:

In opposition to individual and cultural arrogance, it seems to me a
far happier and more rational thing to recognise that the world is full
of interesting ways of being - possibilities that may well be
improvements on our own - than to think that our culture has all the
answers, all the best solutions. It is brutal and foolish to look down
on others, to dismiss their ways of living and loving developed over
millennia as ’primitive’. Surely all human cultural responses to the
extraordinary problem of living - even those we find unpalatable - are
worthy of our interest and respect.

Certainly, when it comes to evaluating foreign cultures, little is as
it seems to our prejudiced eye. During the Vietnam war, the American
GIs referred to their Vietnamese enemy as ‘Gooks’, a term that has
become synonymous with dehumanising racism. How tragic and poignant
that American use of the word in fact originated in the Korean war -
’guk’ is a Korean word which means ’people’. The Koreans call
themselves ‘Hangukin’, which means ‘the people of the Han river’.

Or to consider an extreme example, could anything be more alien to
Westerners than the act of suicide bombing? Although it has almost
never been reported, there had never been a suicide bomb attack in Iraq
before the 2003 invasion. The UN’s IRIN news network reported on March
8 that a 41 year-old Iraqi woman, Um Abdallah, was learning how to turn
herself into a suicide bomber. Revulsion, horror, incomprehension -
isn’t her decision the epitome of the ‘alienness’ of foreign culture to
many Britons? And yet IRIN fills in some of the background:

"Um Abdallah is one of thousands of Iraqis who have lost their
relatives in the past four years. Her two boys and one girl were killed
during a US military attack in her neighbourhood.

"'My husband was killed four months ago by Iraqi forces. Killed
alongside him were my son-in-law and his two children. I cannot even
remember how many bullets the children had in their bodies,' she said.

"She does not know exactly when she is going to detonate herself but
she is sure she will be ready whenever she is asked." (IRIN, ‘Killings
drive women to become suicide bombers,’ March 8, 2007)

Is Um Abdallah really such an alien being? She has lost her sons and
daughter, her husband, and other loved ones besides. She has lost
everything. Is her response really so impossible to comprehend? Is not
our response to wish we could somehow do something to relieve her
suffering and protect her from her own plan precisely because her
suffering is so comprehensible? And yet, if our media are to be
believed, our reaction should simply be one of loathing for this
‘alien’ product of an ‘alien’ culture.

So much of what we are taught to hate is actually the product of
suffering - real, comprehensible and very human - rather than of some
weird, mystical phenomenon called ’evil’. And far too much of that
suffering originates with our own lack of compassion, our own system of
domination and exploitation preaching hate. As Nietzsche said so well:

“Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!”

West Is Best.... Ignored!

In 1955, the British governor of Kenya, declared:

"The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a great mass of
human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state."
(Quoted, John Pilger, 'Iraq is a War of National Liberation,' The New
Statesman, April 15, 2004)

In "civilising" the country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32 European lives.

In a March 2000 Guardian article, Polly Toynbee wrote in similar vein:

"In our political and social culture we have a democratic way of life
which we know, without any doubt at all, is far better than any other
in the history of humanity. Even if we don't like to admit it, we are
all missionaries and believers that our own way is the best when it
comes to the things that really matter." (Toynbee, ‘The West really is
the best,’ The Observer, March 5, 2000)

Unfortunately, this arrogance appears to be a common theme among the
“beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall”.

Happily, the people that Westerners deem in a “very primitive moral and
social state” do not share their view. Historian John Bodley reported:

“According to Captain Cook’s account of his first landing on the
Australian mainland, Aborigines on the beach totally ignored both his
ship and his men until they became obnoxious... a complete lack of
interest in white people’s habits, material possessions, and beliefs
was characteristic of Aborigines in a variety of contact settings.”
(John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1982, p.16)

In his book Re-Enchantment, Jeffrey Paine described a common Asian view of Westerners in 1912:

If ever there was a shocking challenge to some key nose-on-our-face
assumptions about the world, then this surely is it. Aren’t Third World
people supposed to share Toynbee’s view of the magnificent West? Alas,
there is more bad news. Paine added of a particular group of Asians:

“Tibetans had tended to view Caucasians as idiot savants,
preternaturally good at, say, constructing engines but otherwise dumb
to the subtleties of the spirit.” (Ibid, p.56)

Tibetan Buddhist teachings, in particular, were deemed completely
beyond us: “One does not teach the precious dharma to Westerners,” was
the operating assumption. (Ibid p.59)

Big ships, big engines, big buildings - small impression!

This might seem remarkable at first sight, but actually the reasoning
is not so strange - Tibetans appreciated that Westerners were more or
less completely bewildered when it came to matters of psychological
understanding. Consider, for example, the issue of psychological health
and happiness.

The Internationally Famous Cabbage Dish

In late 2005, I visited South Korea for the first time. I was delighted
to sit on floor cushions around low restaurant tables to be confronted
by dozens of small dishes of food, most of it unknown, almost all of it
devilishly spicy. Equally delightful were the loud noises made by my
endlessly polite and kind Korean hosts as they slurped their noodles
and guzzled their soup. The part of me that remains forever
ten-years-old felt at last vindicated by the fact that a whole society
deemed civilised and polite the same behaviour that had earned me
fierce looks as a child. Thoreau again:

“The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul
to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good
behaviour. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Ibid,
p.53)

I also enjoyed slurping the mysterious, traditional herbal teas with
curious objects bobbing about in them; the fruits I’d never seen
before; the ornate rice cakes and other mysteries of the ancient Korean
culture. I feel there is something heart-warming about seeing
difference and thinking: ‘That’s how they like it - that’s what they
enjoy,’ even when what they enjoy means nothing to me. I find it
wonderful that Koreans are deeply proud of their spicy pickled Chinese
cabbage, ‘kimchi’, the national dish. A guide book declares with
typically supercharged Korean enthusiasm:

“Visitors cannot really say they have been to Korea if they have not
tasted kimchi, the internationally famous cabbage dish... These days
kimchi is gaining popularity worldwide for its nutritional value and
disease-prevention effect.”

A few years ago I went with my Japanese girlfriend to an English pub
for the first time. As we sat down, she took out two small, folded
towels and placed them next to her glass on the table - one to wipe her
glass, as required, and one to dab her face. The joy of seeing that
little ritual carried out in the middle of a spit-and-sawdust pub is
exactly what I have in mind. Difference reminds us of the uniqueness of
others, of their preciousness, transience, and in fact of their
fundamental aloneness in the world.

A sense of fellow feeling and compassion can also be found in a sense
of unity beneath difference - others may do things differently, but we
can understand what it is they like about it; we can empathise with
their happiness in doing things ‘just so’ in a way that makes them feel
more comfortable in the world.

By contrast, there is something depressing and dehumanising about the
thought of people as anonymous crowds, as blank “masses” of humanity.
I’ve always recoiled from the title of John Carey’s book, The
Intellectuals and the Masses. Regardless of the contents of the book,
the title always reminds me of the sense, which many “intellectuals”
seem to have, that a select few brainy types are real, serious
individuals, while the rest of us are mere “masses”, “proletarians”, a
kind of human porridge.

But what exactly is an “intellectual”? If someone describes themselves
as an “intellectual”, I cringe, much as I do when I hear someone
describe themselves as “a celebrity” or “famous”. I greatly enjoyed
reading this description of an intellectual upper class in H.G. Wells’
novel The First Men In The Moon:

"These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall,
form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of
them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion
the Grand Lunar... The unlimited development of the minds of the
intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony
skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about
the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far and no
farther' to all his possibilities." (H.G. Wells, The First Men in The
Moon)

By some quirk of fate, Wells’ description finds amusing and
contradictory echoes in Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the role of liberal
intellectuals in our own society:

In opposition to individual and cultural arrogance, it seems to me a
far happier and more rational thing to recognise that the world is full
of interesting ways of being - possibilities that may well be
improvements on our own - than to think that our culture has all the
answers, all the best solutions. It is brutal and foolish to look down
on others, to dismiss their ways of living and loving developed over
millennia as ’primitive’. Surely all human cultural responses to the
extraordinary problem of living - even those we find unpalatable - are
worthy of our interest and respect.

Certainly, when it comes to evaluating foreign cultures, little is as
it seems to our prejudiced eye. During the Vietnam war, the American
GIs referred to their Vietnamese enemy as ‘Gooks’, a term that has
become synonymous with dehumanising racism. How tragic and poignant
that American use of the word in fact originated in the Korean war -
’guk’ is a Korean word which means ’people’. The Koreans call
themselves ‘Hangukin’, which means ‘the people of the Han river’.

Or to consider an extreme example, could anything be more alien to
Westerners than the act of suicide bombing? Although it has almost
never been reported, there had never been a suicide bomb attack in Iraq
before the 2003 invasion. The UN’s IRIN news network reported on March
8 that a 41 year-old Iraqi woman, Um Abdallah, was learning how to turn
herself into a suicide bomber. Revulsion, horror, incomprehension -
isn’t her decision the epitome of the ‘alienness’ of foreign culture to
many Britons? And yet IRIN fills in some of the background:

"Um Abdallah is one of thousands of Iraqis who have lost their
relatives in the past four years. Her two boys and one girl were killed
during a US military attack in her neighbourhood.

"'My husband was killed four months ago by Iraqi forces. Killed
alongside him were my son-in-law and his two children. I cannot even
remember how many bullets the children had in their bodies,' she said.

"She does not know exactly when she is going to detonate herself but
she is sure she will be ready whenever she is asked." (IRIN, ‘Killings
drive women to become suicide bombers,’ March 8, 2007)

Is Um Abdallah really such an alien being? She has lost her sons and
daughter, her husband, and other loved ones besides. She has lost
everything. Is her response really so impossible to comprehend? Is not
our response to wish we could somehow do something to relieve her
suffering and protect her from her own plan precisely because her
suffering is so comprehensible? And yet, if our media are to be
believed, our reaction should simply be one of loathing for this
‘alien’ product of an ‘alien’ culture.

So much of what we are taught to hate is actually the product of
suffering - real, comprehensible and very human - rather than of some
weird, mystical phenomenon called ’evil’. And far too much of that
suffering originates with our own lack of compassion, our own system of
domination and exploitation preaching hate. As Nietzsche said so well:

“Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!”

West Is Best.... Ignored!

In 1955, the British governor of Kenya, declared:

"The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a great mass of
human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state."
(Quoted, John Pilger, 'Iraq is a War of National Liberation,' The New
Statesman, April 15, 2004)

In "civilising" the country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32 European lives.

In a March 2000 Guardian article, Polly Toynbee wrote in similar vein:

"In our political and social culture we have a democratic way of life
which we know, without any doubt at all, is far better than any other
in the history of humanity. Even if we don't like to admit it, we are
all missionaries and believers that our own way is the best when it
comes to the things that really matter." (Toynbee, ‘The West really is
the best,’ The Observer, March 5, 2000)

Unfortunately, this arrogance appears to be a common theme among the
“beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall”.

Happily, the people that Westerners deem in a “very primitive moral and
social state” do not share their view. Historian John Bodley reported:

“According to Captain Cook’s account of his first landing on the
Australian mainland, Aborigines on the beach totally ignored both his
ship and his men until they became obnoxious... a complete lack of
interest in white people’s habits, material possessions, and beliefs
was characteristic of Aborigines in a variety of contact settings.”
(John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1982, p.16)

In his book Re-Enchantment, Jeffrey Paine described a common Asian view of Westerners in 1912:

If ever there was a shocking challenge to some key nose-on-our-face
assumptions about the world, then this surely is it. Aren’t Third World
people supposed to share Toynbee’s view of the magnificent West? Alas,
there is more bad news. Paine added of a particular group of Asians:

“Tibetans had tended to view Caucasians as idiot savants,
preternaturally good at, say, constructing engines but otherwise dumb
to the subtleties of the spirit.” (Ibid, p.56)

Tibetan Buddhist teachings, in particular, were deemed completely
beyond us: “One does not teach the precious dharma to Westerners,” was
the operating assumption. (Ibid p.59)

Big ships, big engines, big buildings - small impression!

This might seem remarkable at first sight, but actually the reasoning
is not so strange - Tibetans appreciated that Westerners were more or
less completely bewildered when it came to matters of psychological
understanding. Consider, for example, the issue of psychological health
and happiness.

Living Life To The Full

Contemporary Western culture assumes that happiness can best be
achieved by gathering to ourselves as many pleasurable experiences as
possible. When we talk of “making the most of life” and “living life to
the full”, we mean a life filled with pleasure. Our focus is therefore,
of course, very much externally directed. The psychologist Erich Fromm
asked:

"What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer
the question by saying that to be happy is to have 'fun,' or 'to have a
good time'... What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies,
parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television,
taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on
Sunday mornings, and travelling... we might say that the concept of
happiness is, at best, identified with that of pleasure." (Fromm, The
Sane Society, Routledge, 2002, p.194)

What is so remarkable is that, as we are doing all this, we give barely
a thought to the condition of the inner, psychological ‘receptacles’
into which these experiences are, as it were, poured and in which we
hope happiness will arise - our minds! How sophisticated would we judge
a farmer who eagerly planted seeds without giving a thought to the
quality of the soil in which those seeds were sown?

Up until quite recently, many people in the West gave little thought
even to the importance of physical fitness for health - the concern
struck many of us as an effete indulgence, a symptom of hair-shirted
hypochondria. But how many people today recognise the need, or even
possibility, of maintaining psychological fitness and health beyond
taking time out to relax? How many of us even believe it is possible to
train our minds, much less for some version of mental or emotional
fitness? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison comments:

“There is a tremendous lacuna in our worldview, where training is seen
as important for strength, for physical agility, for athletic ability,
for musical ability - for everything +except+ emotions.” (Quoted,
Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Ballantine, 2007,
p.231)

As it turns out, for all the accumulation of pleasurable experiences,
the Western crop of happiness is blighted by psychological weeds, toxic
mental soil and ideational frosts. For the truth is that the untrained
human mind is almost guaranteed to be filled with suffering - a
statement of obvious fact for many Asians, but an almost meaningless
comment in the West.

Psychologist Oliver James reports that almost a quarter of Britons
currently suffer from serious emotional distress, such as depression
and anxiety, and that another quarter are on the verge of such
conditions - that‘s half the population! James believes that much of
this emotional distress is rooted in what he calls “affluenza”:

“It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions,
looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.” (James,
Affluenza, Vermilion, 2007, p.vii)

These values, in turn, are all oriented towards external pleasurable
experiences. So to what extent do they deliver happiness, for example
for people who are maximally ‘successful‘?

One survey found that over one-third of a sample of super-rich people
(those with net wealth of £70 million or more) were less happy than the
national average. A second study found no difference between the
happiness levels of lottery winners and comparison samples of people
with average incomes, or even of paraplegics. (Ibid, p.34)

In truth, as the statistics make very clear, we in the West are
tormented by the fact that our minds are more or less out of control.
Who amongst us has not been kept awake at night by a storm of angry,
fearful, craving, jealous, or grieving thoughts? From the moment we
wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, day after day, thoughts can
completely tyrannise the mind. Our emphasis, in response, tends to be
on ‘action’ - by which we mean external action. We believe that doing
something, going somewhere, seeing someone, drinking something, can
bring peace of mind, control. Quite often none of this really helps.

I think one of the most shocking realisations we have as we reach
adulthood is the dramatic power of the uncontrolled mind, the sheer
intensity of psychological suffering, in the event of some kind of
crisis. The feeling that nothing can be done, that we are helpless in
the face of our own thoughts - often interpreted in the West as a
belief that there’s nothing we can do about ’life’ - is a cause of
incalculable misery.

But it seems to me that our suffering is pointing us towards a
solution. Indeed, I think this is a perfect example of how we can
benefit greatly from opening our minds to non-Western cultural
solutions. As ever, doing so requires the humility to see that we are
not all-powerful, that we do not stride the world as giants among
intellectual and cultural pygmies.

If we are tormented by uncontrolled thoughts, then perhaps answers can
be found by asking the obvious question: Can some kind of control be
gained over destructive thoughts? Can something be done?

Part 2 will follow shortly...

Contemporary Western culture assumes that happiness can best be
achieved by gathering to ourselves as many pleasurable experiences as
possible. When we talk of “making the most of life” and “living life to
the full”, we mean a life filled with pleasure. Our focus is therefore,
of course, very much externally directed. The psychologist Erich Fromm
asked:

"What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer
the question by saying that to be happy is to have 'fun,' or 'to have a
good time'... What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies,
parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television,
taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on
Sunday mornings, and travelling... we might say that the concept of
happiness is, at best, identified with that of pleasure." (Fromm, The
Sane Society, Routledge, 2002, p.194)

What is so remarkable is that, as we are doing all this, we give barely
a thought to the condition of the inner, psychological ‘receptacles’
into which these experiences are, as it were, poured and in which we
hope happiness will arise - our minds! How sophisticated would we judge
a farmer who eagerly planted seeds without giving a thought to the
quality of the soil in which those seeds were sown?

Up until quite recently, many people in the West gave little thought
even to the importance of physical fitness for health - the concern
struck many of us as an effete indulgence, a symptom of hair-shirted
hypochondria. But how many people today recognise the need, or even
possibility, of maintaining psychological fitness and health beyond
taking time out to relax? How many of us even believe it is possible to
train our minds, much less for some version of mental or emotional
fitness? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison comments:

“There is a tremendous lacuna in our worldview, where training is seen
as important for strength, for physical agility, for athletic ability,
for musical ability - for everything +except+ emotions.” (Quoted,
Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Ballantine, 2007,
p.231)

As it turns out, for all the accumulation of pleasurable experiences,
the Western crop of happiness is blighted by psychological weeds, toxic
mental soil and ideational frosts. For the truth is that the untrained
human mind is almost guaranteed to be filled with suffering - a
statement of obvious fact for many Asians, but an almost meaningless
comment in the West.

Psychologist Oliver James reports that almost a quarter of Britons
currently suffer from serious emotional distress, such as depression
and anxiety, and that another quarter are on the verge of such
conditions - that‘s half the population! James believes that much of
this emotional distress is rooted in what he calls “affluenza”:

“It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions,
looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.” (James,
Affluenza, Vermilion, 2007, p.vii)

These values, in turn, are all oriented towards external pleasurable
experiences. So to what extent do they deliver happiness, for example
for people who are maximally ‘successful‘?

One survey found that over one-third of a sample of super-rich people
(those with net wealth of £70 million or more) were less happy than the
national average. A second study found no difference between the
happiness levels of lottery winners and comparison samples of people
with average incomes, or even of paraplegics. (Ibid, p.34)

In truth, as the statistics make very clear, we in the West are
tormented by the fact that our minds are more or less out of control.
Who amongst us has not been kept awake at night by a storm of angry,
fearful, craving, jealous, or grieving thoughts? From the moment we
wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, day after day, thoughts can
completely tyrannise the mind. Our emphasis, in response, tends to be
on ‘action’ - by which we mean external action. We believe that doing
something, going somewhere, seeing someone, drinking something, can
bring peace of mind, control. Quite often none of this really helps.

I think one of the most shocking realisations we have as we reach
adulthood is the dramatic power of the uncontrolled mind, the sheer
intensity of psychological suffering, in the event of some kind of
crisis. The feeling that nothing can be done, that we are helpless in
the face of our own thoughts - often interpreted in the West as a
belief that there’s nothing we can do about ’life’ - is a cause of
incalculable misery.

But it seems to me that our suffering is pointing us towards a
solution. Indeed, I think this is a perfect example of how we can
benefit greatly from opening our minds to non-Western cultural
solutions. As ever, doing so requires the humility to see that we are
not all-powerful, that we do not stride the world as giants among
intellectual and cultural pygmies.

If we are tormented by uncontrolled thoughts, then perhaps answers can
be found by asking the obvious question: Can some kind of control be
gained over destructive thoughts? Can something be done?

Part 2 will follow shortly...

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